


Cold Fusion: Hallows Eve

by dalniente



Series: Cold Fusion [3]
Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Developing Friendships, Established Relationship, F/M, Forgiveness, Friendship, Insecurity, Kidnapping, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rescue Missions, Violence, any graphic depictions of violence will be noted at the beginning of the chapter in question, in which communication is the backbone of a healthy relationship, originally it was going to be two fics, there's a lot that happens in this fic you guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23864899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalniente/pseuds/dalniente
Summary: Megamind can't stand by and watch when things go wrong. Later, when a house fire brings sudden tragedy to a well-known local family, Megamind and Roxanne are forced to address the elephant in the room with regards to Metro Man. Sequel to Cold Fusion: True North.
Relationships: Megamind & Metro Man, Megamind & Minion, Megamind/Roxanne Ritchi, Metro Man & Roxanne Ritchi, Minion & Roxanne Ritchi
Series: Cold Fusion [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1488104
Comments: 52
Kudos: 109





	1. Chapter 1

Roxanne peers curiously at Megamind as she fastens her coat. She's getting used to seeing him in regular clothes, but it still never fails to catch her attention—there's always a sort of _wait a minute_ double-take. Sometimes she wonders if she'll ever really stop being surprised.

But currently, her interest is less cerebral and more direct. "Why don't you ever wear turtlenecks?"

He blinks up at her, long fingers skipping up the line of buttons on his grey sweater. "I can't."

"But your neck would be protected," Roxanne says. "You wouldn't have to wear scarves all the time." She has to admit he wears scarves well, which is good, because he's amassed a startlingly extensive collection since he started wearing more than just the spandex. Still, it's just one more thing to get tangled up in whatever project he's working on if he's working outside.

"True," he agrees, nodding, and reaches for the small black bottle sitting on top of that morning's untouched newspaper. Sideways-slanting morning sunlight catches his glass as he bolts a caffeine pill down with some water. "But I like scarves," he continues with a gasp as soon as the glass leaves his lips. Roxanne shakes her head at him. _Breathe, Megamind_. She sometimes thinks he wouldn't if he didn't have to. "I might like turtlenecks too, but I've never worn one."

"What, never?"

Megamind looks at her then, his expression all wry amusement. "I can't get them over my head." Roxanne blinks, then makes a face. He laughs. "Do you really not notice?"

She shrugs, laughing a little bit as well. "I _notice_ , I just…don't always think about it? I guess I tend to assume most of your eccentricities are because you're…well, weird. Not because you're an alien."

He raises his eyebrows, a playful grin dancing around the corners of his mouth. "Roxanne. I'm weird _because_ I'm an alien."

Roxanne pauses, looks at him, pretends to consider that for a moment. He's not wrong; there's absolutely no _maybe_ about his little oddnesses being largely due to his inhumanity, but… "No," she says eventually, her tone still light and teasing, "no, you're just weird."

He chuckles, shakes his head at her. "Okay."

"So, which scarf for today?" Roxanne wants to know. He's wearing black jeans and his sweater is grey over a black shirt, and the October air is chilly, so she's guessing either grey or black knit.

She's partly right. "I don't think you've seen this one before," he says, grinning as he pulls it out of his overnight bag.

Roxanne bites her lip to keep from laughing. The scarf is knit, wide, and striped black and orange. The ends are solid black and have large, lopsided orange jack-o-lanterns knitted into them, and the fringe of orange balls is very slightly ridiculous.

Thank you to Tabbydragon for the lovely art of a shy Megamind in his very slightly ridiculous Halloween scarf!!! I don't know how to make the photobucket logo go away T^T

"I know," Megamind says with a crooked smile, looping it twice around his neck as she comes over to tweak it so it hangs straight. It dangles almost to his knees, and the orange contrast makes his skin look bluer than usual. Roxanne's lips twitch. "But it's warm. I love this scarf."

"No, no, it's adorable," Roxanne assures him. She fiddles with the collar of his button-down, flattens her hands on his thin chest. "Where on Earth did you get it?"

"Uncle Mitch made it for me when I was nine. We," he says, and grins a little at the memory, "Minion and I, we had to wear something Halloween-related for school. I had sort of resigned myself to failing that particular assignment, but then Halloween came and the CO came by my cell with a package from Uncle Mitch. He holed up in his cell for two days, knitting this. Lord knows where he got the yarn and the needles." His eyes are distant, and he's smiling unconsciously as he rubs the material between his fingers. "It was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen. I loved it."

Roxanne has heard Mitch's name before, but Megamind doesn't usually talk about his childhood. This might be the first time she's heard him sound anything like nostalgic about a certain memory.

"I like it," she decides, and he glances back up at her. "Your uncle Mitch sounds like a good guy."

Megamind snorts. "You would never think it to look at him," he tells her, nudging forward against her forehead and resting his hands on her hips. "Big, bald, one-eyed. Scarred. Tattoos _everywhere_."

"I'm sure he's a lovely person," Roxanne says.

"He's in for life on a triple-murder charge," Megamind says, lips twitching. His eyes are twinkling. "First-degree. He used to let me color in his tattoos."

"And he knitted you a Halloween scarf so you would have something to wear to school." Roxanne shakes her head.

"People can surprise you like that," he says, and she grins at him, ducks forward to give him a quick kiss.

"People have."

* * *

They walk north down Main Street hand-in-hand. Megamind has been wearing his new disguise out with Roxanne often enough that people are starting to recognize the two of them together—he catches eyes and nods recognition when someone calls his name. Roxanne is still widely recognized, and she has a reasonably significant number of fans who keep an eye on her personal life.

Including a weird collection of people who used to send her hate mail for dating Metro Man, but who—somehow—found each other and banded together to send her a bouquet after Wayne's death. That one threw her for a loop. She's now beginning to receive hate mail for dating anyone now that Metro Man is dead.

Whatever. She's used to it.

But Megamind's human persona is working out well, overall. Roxanne told him playfully that humans don't get to pick their first names and neither should he, but Megamind refused point-blank to be called William ("That's what you get for pulling Shakespeare on me," Roxanne said at the time), so the name on his driver's license is William Pavel Chudakov, and he uses his middle name for everything. Roxanne tells him very little about the person whose face he's wearing, but admits that she obtained the scans overseas, and assures him that anybody who actually recognizes him probably isn't going to want to draw attention to them. Megamind doesn't press her for information. He doesn't care, really; all he wants is to be able to go places with her and surprise her at the office, and Pavel makes that possible. Megamind has been making up his backstory as he goes along. It's almost fun, in a way.

"Look, look at that one!" Roxanne points at a fake corpse propped in a doorway, tongue lolling and eyes bulging.

Megamind hums appreciatively. "Now that's just _gross_."

Metro City is large, home to a little over three million people in the city proper. This is unusual for a midwestern city with no river access to the coast, but someone in city planning saw an opportunity several decades prior and Metro is home to the country's largest commercial and passenger spaceport, a central hub for importing goods and resources from Earth's colonies on Mars and Europa and exporting Terran commodities.

Despite her size, the people who live in Metro get behind Halloween with the joyfully morbid vigor usually endemic to small, out-of-the way towns. Skeletons dangle in shop windows and scarecrows are tied creakily to street light poles, feral pigeons perching on their arms without a care. Jack o' lanterns are everywhere, most of them plastic or metal, but Roxanne notices a few grinning vegetables that haven't been smashed.

"Why do people try?" Megamind asks as they approach one of these. "I mean, it's a nice idea, but we're on the main drag, here. There's no _way_ those are going to survive the night. Half of them probably won't even survive the day."

Roxanne laughs. "The people who made them are new in town." At Megamind's dubious expression, she insists, "No, really. I bet they're new." There are a few pumpkin-carving daredevils scattered throughout Metro City—Roxanne knows of one brick row home on Chestnut Street that showcases up to ten glowing vegetables every year, lined up on its porch railing. They're destroyed on a fairly regular basis, but there's always a new one to take the squished one's place. Roxanne can only guess where the owners get such an unlimited supply of pumpkins.

But the Chestnut Street house is the exception to the rule: real pumpkins are almost always put out by people who haven't spent Halloween in Metro City before. The rule is so well-known that three of the doors Roxanne and Megamind walk past have 'Welcome to Metro City' fliers swinging from the door handles above the jack o' lanterns; she points those out as they walk east towards the harbor and Evil Lair.

The Lair is quite a hike from Roxanne's apartment. Normally, she and Megamind would simply call a cab, or take a bus to the nearest stop and walk the rest of the way, but today is Halloween and it was Megamind's idea to walk and see the sights "before the night's revelry destroys everything of interest." Roxanne has no problem with walking. It's Sunday and she isn't going into work this weekend come hell or high water. She didn't go in on Saturday, either; this is the first Halloween weekend she hasn't worked in five years. She figures the news station owes her this much.

This is also the first Halloween in years that Megamind hasn't had an Evil Scheme to set in motion. Today, they're just out to enjoy each other's company. Roxanne hooks her arm through Megamind's and leans on him for a few steps, shoving him to the side a little so he stumbles and laughs and then looks at her with dancing green eyes and shoves her back.

It was disconcerting for a while to see Megamind's eyes shining out of such an unfamiliar human face, but she's grown more or less used to it over the past few months. And Megamind certainly seems more comfortable this way in public—the few times Roxanne has seen him wearing his true face at public functions, he's been jumpy and stiff, too artificially confident, overly careful not to let anyone one see his hands shake when he can't stand with his back to a wall.

Roxanne sees, of course, but only because she's looking.

(It hurts, to see him at events and have to treat him with polite aloofness instead of trying to steady him a little. Hurts more than Roxanne was expecting it would.)

But today, the air is comfortably nippy, people are smiling, and it's Halloween. Megamind inhales deeply. "Ahh, _excitement_ ," he says happily, and glances at Roxanne. "Can you smell it? Surely even you can smell _that_."

She sniffs. "I don't smell anything unusual," she says. Halloween has always kind of had a smell, but she's always chalked it up to the chill in the air and the city's food trucks changing their menus. "How can you smell it? Didn't you take your caffeine earlier?" 

He shrugs. Roxanne's brother, a neurochemist at a research facility in San Francisco, was able to come up with a formula for a medication to block Megamind's pheromone receptors almost completely, something absolutely vital now that Megamind is among humans so much. The constant overstimulation from the biochemical output of a less-sensitive species is too much for him to handle, otherwise. "Some things still get through, if they're strong enough," he says. "But I'm only getting bits and pieces." He grins at her. "This is fantastic," he adds. "You know, this is the first time I've been able to go out and about in the city on a major holiday and not feel either drunk or nauseated after fifteen minutes?"

Roxanne laughs. "You've never been drunk in your life."

"I've smelled drunken humans. That's the same thing." He wrinkles his nose. "Humans are _gross_."

"Racist," she says, but she knows he's joking, and she's rewarded with a gentle jab in her side from a sharp elbow.

"Xenophile," he replies. Then he frowns a little. "There's something else, too, I think, but I can't put my finger on it. It's got to be strong if it's getting through to me even through the meds." He sniffs again, shakes his head. "You really can't smell it? It's like…rot. Sweet rot." He peers hopefully at Roxanne. "Anything?"

She breathes in, the cold air freezing her nose and chilling the back of her throat, and shakes her head. "Nope," she says with a shrug. "Nothing unusual. It's probably just some smashed pumpkins in an alley, or something."

"Maybe," Megamind says, but he doesn't sound convinced.

* * *

The decorations and lights have thinned out to nothing by the time they reach the old power plant tucked in among the rows of warehouses near Metro Harbor. The plan is for them to stop in at the Lair for a quick lunch before heading out again, north to the outskirts of the city and residential neighborhoods.

Minion greets them at the door in a truly spectacular eight-foot headless horseman costume. The gorilla body is wearing a high-collared shirt and bow-tie under a waistcoat and tweed jacket, but the dome is missing and Minion's habitat ball is tucked under one arm. Roxanne jumps, then laughs.

The music echoing throughout the Lair makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. "What am I listening to?" she asks, glancing around for the source of the noise as she follows a chortling Minion inside. It's eerie, centered around a single tone and quavering endlessly up and down—a vast, lonely sound, sad and ancient. 

Megamind steps inside, looks around, listens for a moment, and then his face lights up with recognition and he half-dances further into the Lair, spinning on his toes with his arms out and his head thrown back.

"Live transmission from Jupiter," Minion says. He sounds very proud of himself. Megamind makes a happy _wheeeeee_ -ing sound under his breath. "Magnetic particle vibrations."

Megamind seizes his lip between his teeth and grins up at the ceiling as he spins, eyes closed. He looks utterly content, like a cat lying in the sun. "I _love_ the noise from Jupiter. It makes my bones tingle."

Roxanne shudders, but neither of them notices. She's glad. The creepy noise makes her skin crawl a little bit, but Megamind and Minion both look genuinely happy _._ Crawly skin is a small price to pay.

Minion chuckles. "As far as planetary magnetic output goes, Jupiter's is pretty. Neptune's is a little too high-pitched for my taste."

"Anything's better than the panic sirens," Megamind murmurs, still with his little smile in place, still revolving. Then he stops abruptly and straightens, mock-glares at Roxanne. "Speaking of which, I am going to destroy your alarm clock."

"I like that clock!" Roxanne protests. "You have no idea how long it's taken me to find an alarm that actually wakes me up."

Megamind holds up a hand to stave off her protest. "I will personally come to your apartment every morning and drag you out of bed myself if it means never having to hear that clock again. It almost gave me a panic attack this morning. _Again_. Your clock didn't wake you up," he says, pointing at her, " _I did_."

Roxanne throws up her hands. "I'm sorry! I forgot to turn it off last night." She's usually pretty good about turning her alarm off on the occasions that Megamind sleeps over at her place instead of the other way around, but she forgot last night. This morning, she woke up to a frightened squawk from her boyfriend just before he flung his skinny body across hers, pressing her into the mattress and covering the back of his head with both hands. "Just what is so bad about my clock, anyway?" she demands. "I thought you would be used to it by now!"

He folds his arms over his chest and cocks his hips. "It sounds like a panic siren."

It's funny, Roxanne thinks vaguely, that the tilt of his hips and the angle of his eyebrows is how she knows he's actually sort of serious about this. "You keep saying _panic siren_ , I don't—"

Minion sighs. "Your clock sounds like one of the emergency klaxons on our homeworld." Roxanne turns and stares up at him. Minion just blinks at her sheepishly. "The only way I was able to sleep in your apartment after Titan was to set my suit to generate a conflicting frequency so that I wouldn't hear your alarm. It was, um." He shuffles his feet and grimaces. "Distressing."

"Minion, good lord!" she exclaims. "Why didn't you say something?"

"I handled it," he says. "It wasn't like I was right next to it."

Roxanne turns her incredulous stare towards Megamind, who shrugs. "I told you, that first morning, I wanted to build you a new alarm clock," he begins, but Roxanne stops him.

"Wait, now, just wait a minute." She waves her hands at him. First of all, she can't believe he hasn't explained all that until now, but also… "Your gut reaction to an emergency siren heralding the end of the world is to shield _me?_ "

He blinks and goes a little bit stiff, flicking his gaze nervously from side to side. "I would have said my gut reaction was to scream like a small child, but your way sounds much better. I'll go with that, yes."

Roxanne tilts her head. He's trying to distract her, and she knows it. "That's…really sweet, actually." Megamind flushes a deep rose-purple. "Thank you."

Minion rolls his eyes and starts to clank away. "I'll be in the kitchen when you two have finished being cute."

* * *

"So, how were the decorations this year?" Minion asks. He does most of the driving around, so he has a better understanding than Megamind about what Halloween decorations in Metro City tend to look like. "Are there ghosts hanging from street lights again?"

Roxanne shakes her head. "No, this year it's mostly scarecrows tied to the lampposts."

"There were a few corpses, too" Megamind offers as he enters the kitchen. He'd hung back to listen to Jupiter for a little longer, but he hates being left out if he doesn't need to be when Roxanne and Minion start talking. Roxanne isn't sure, but she thinks it might be because he's still amused that they get along so well. "I particularly liked the one outside that rubber modeling place."

Roxanne smiles wistfully. "My family used to buy all our Halloween decorations from that shop," she remembers. "One year, Dad dressed up as one of the Rotting Men #3—we had one that we always put out on the porch to scare trick-or-treaters—and held really still on one of the porch chairs."

"Until the kids rang the bell, right?" Minion laughs.

Roxanne nods, grinning at the memory. "I think one of them nearly wet himself. I thought it was pretty funny."

Megamind scowls. "Children are evil," he complains. "All of them have such a _thing_ about public humiliation."

"You were reasonably evil as a child, I seem to recall," Minion points out. "No disguises at the table, Sir. And take off your gloves." He says nothing about the scarf when Megamind's human overlay disappears, but his eye lingers for a moment and he smiles.

"Yes, well, I had a _reason_ ," Megamind says loftily, shedding his gloves and sitting on them.

Minion raises an eyebrow. "You made the school shrink _cry_."

"I merely beat him at his own game." Megamind sniffs, then smiles excitedly at the pot on the stove. "Soup?" he says. "You made soup? Minion, you shouldn't have."

"Oh, I've already eaten, Sir," Minions says, waving a hand. He rarely does much with soup; if it isn't frozen, it's more trouble than it's worth to him to eat it. "Besides, it's easy, and you'll want to be on your way."

"You could come with us," Roxanne tells him. "Honestly, we'd love to have you. It isn't as though we're doing anything particularly private. We're just wandering around and looking at the sights."

Minion waves at her again. "No, that's all right," he replies. "I'm really fine right here. I have some things I need to take care of; you two go and have fun."

Roxanne was worried, initially, that Minion would begin to resent her for taking up more of Megamind's time than he was used to. But, to her surprise, it's actually been fairly easy for both of them to adjust to the changes. And according to Megamind, Minion has been enjoying the time off. He's been developing some of his own projects in his downtime.

He also enjoys working on expanding Megamind's wardrobe. Megamind's physical proportions make it impossible for him to buy clothes off the rack; slacks that fit his hips cut off well above his ankles and shirts that fit his shoulders are horribly baggy on the rest of him. And shoes are an absolute non-starter. It's lucky Minion genuinely likes playing dress-up with Megamind, or he'd have nothing but his leathers.

Not that Roxanne would complain about only ever seeing Megamind in leather.

"This feels…more normal," he said, when she expressed concern that he thought she wanted him to dress otherwise. "It never mattered, before, but—as long as I'm not rejecting society entirely anymore, I may as well try this, right? And Minion is having fun."

That was ages ago, though. It's surprising to her, sometimes, that she and Megamind have been dating now for several months. Sometimes it seems much longer, and sometimes it feels like they only started yesterday. She can't quite believe it, sometimes, when she turns and finds Megamind grinning at her, how absurdly content she feels with him.

Megamind has had no more problems with worrying she'll leave him since the 3-D projector incident—at least, not that he's mentioned to Roxanne. She texts him occasionally when she's at work, that she loves him or she's thinking about him. And he said, when she asked after a couple weeks of that, it was helping. Sometimes he goes quiet, and she tries to sit a little closer to him, then. Roxanne has never been the most cuddly person in the world, but she can sit a little closer, at least. She can let him put his arm around her. And she can try not to feel nervous about feeling like she's the one to text first, all the time. It's. A silly thing to feel nervous about, right? Telling the person she loves that she's thinking of him, that she loves him, when he asked her to do it and he says it's helping? Sometimes he doesn't reply, sometimes she doesn't hear from him for a few days at a stretch, but she tries to text anyway. _I love you. I miss you. Work sucks, I wish you were here. Lunch today?_

(She tries not to feel bothered about not receiving replies. She doesn't need him to reply. The point of the texts is not to initiate conversation; the point is to let him know she's thinking of him even when he can't see how happy she is to be dating him. And! Often, he does reply!)

And it must be helping, because he hasn't said anything else about being worried about her leaving. But he keeps a notebook in his bedside table. Usually he keeps it in the shallow drawer there, but a few days ago he left it lying open on the nightstand and Roxanne glanced down at it when she crawled over to turn on his lamp before he came to bed.

 _She's not going to leave you. She isn't leaving. She isn't leaving. Ngeke akushiye. She's staying. No te dejará_. _Ő nem hagy téged. Meg fog maradni. She's staying. She loves you. Ngeke akushiye._ 她不會離開你。 _She loves you. Akahambi; uyakuthanda. Sie wird dich nicht verlassen. She's not going to leave you. STOP. STOP. STOP. She loves you. She loves you. Она не оставит вас. STOP. She's not going to leave you._

Over and over and over again, in different inks and different languages and alphabets, crammed two in a line and scribbled in the margins. It made her stop and wonder, but it has been the only indication she's had that Megamind still has doubts. And if that's the _only_ indication…well, maybe she can do something about it today while they're out walking. Megamind mentioned once, months ago, that he couldn't understand why she would want to be with him, of all people, so…if she can help him understand the why, maybe that will help? Megamind isn't one to accept anything that doesn't make sense to him as fact. It goes entirely against his nature.

This is going to take a while. Roxanne knows this. Years of social conditioning aren't going to be erased by a few months' reassurance.

So, she knows he's working on it, but still, maybe she can help at least a little bit. Maybe if Megamind knew the reason she was single for almost a decade, maybe that would help. Roxanne isn't particularly anxious to talk about her past romances—such as they were—but if it would help, then…well, maybe.

Because, if he's having trouble, she wants to know. So she can help. Or, at least, so she can try.

She really wishes she could get some third-party assistance, some way to have _somebody_ _else_ let Megamind know that she has, in fact, found him attractive for quite a while. Longer than just the past few months. She hadn't wanted to admit it, ever. And in the beginning, she was worried about the whole 'bonding with your kidnapper' thing, so…it's hard to remember if she ever _did_ admit it to anyone. She could tell him herself, but it's something that would mean more coming from somebody else. _I've been attracted to you for years_ is one thing. _Oh, yeah, she told me a couple years ago that she thought you were hot_ is something completely different.

There's her brother, Drew, of course, but Roxanne is still holding out hope that she won't have to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was right all the times he teased her about thinking her _supervillainous_ _serial kidnapper_ was hot.

Well, she can tell him about Peter and Chadwick, at least. Maybe that'll help.

* * *

Megamind holds the door for Roxanne when they leave again, bundled up and, in his case, disguised. She glances at him and smiles, tucks a black-gloved hand around his upper arm. He was surprised when she first started doing that—Roxanne is not a cuddly person outside of the bedroom—but he does like the feeling of having her on his arm. He will never say no to holding hands, but there's something that feels vaguely fancy about walking arm-in-arm with her.

They walk in silence for a little while. Megamind looks out at the lake when he can see it between the buildings. The water is green and the little waves are glassy-smooth. There's snow in the air that will come tonight, probably, or tomorrow. But it will take longer for the lake to freeze.

"Megamind." Roxanne's tone tells him she has something on her mind, and he looks at her. She's gazing straight ahead, frowning a little bit. "Has Jo told you about a man named Chad? No? Peter?"

Megamind shakes his head.

Roxanne purses her lips. "Figures. I've dated a bunch of people casually—you know, the one-night sorts of things, where one party promises to call and never does, or it's obvious after the first week or so that we're not compatible? Stuff that's barely even dating?"

Megamind hesitates. Where is she going with this? "I can't say that I do know."

She glances at him, then looks back at the road in front of them. "Right. Well, Peter and Chad were my two really long-term boyfriends." She pauses. "I think…you should know about them. Like I said, I've dated a bunch of people—but really nobody after Chad. I…kind of needed the time to myself. You mind if I talk to you about some stuff?"

Megamind blinks in surprise—heavy conversations out of the blue are not really Roxanne's style; she prefers to let things happen naturally and explain as they go along—but he nods. "Okay," he says, wondering if something is wrong and trying to squelch the urge to ask. "Of course. Fire away."

Roxanne takes a deep breath. "So, I'll start at the beginning, with Peter. I dated him for three years. Starting in high school, up through the end of my first year of college. He's still in the area—came up to Metro University to study law. He's an attorney at one of the firms here. He actually did some work for me, a few years ago.

"Peter…Peter was great. He was a good guy, with a good heart. I loved him." Roxanne says this as fact, without any apparent defensiveness or hidden motive. "He was career-oriented, dedicated, sensitive. He could talk motorcycles with my father and crossword puzzles with my mom, and he and Drew always got along okay. Everyone thought we'd get married, do the whole house with a yard and a dog and two point five children. Everyone," Roxanne stresses, glancing at Megamind. "Including me."

He shakes his head and makes a mental note to learn more about standard, non-modified-for-supervillainy motorcycles. "So…what happened? Why did he leave you?"

Roxanne grins. "He didn't. Mom had a fit when I called and told her I broke up with him."

"I don't understand," Megamind says, bewildered. "You just said you thought you'd marry him. Besides, he sounds perfect for you." He frowns. "For anyone, really."

"That's the thing. He sounds perfect. But he…wasn't right. For me." Her voice shifts, now, moving from wistful towards frustrated as she speaks. "The thing was, he went along with what I wanted every time. _Every time_. He never disagreed or objected. He always admitted he was wrong, he always apologized first. He never _let_ me apologize. _I_ was always the one who started arguments, and _he_ was always the one who said sorry. Hell," she exclaims, really scowling now, " _what_ arguments? We never argued! If I had a problem and said something, he would acknowledge and try to do better. Which was great! Don't get me wrong! It just…" She sighs. "He never told me if he had a problem. Ever. _With anything_. Even in bed, god, it was _always_ all about me. He let me do whatever I wanted. It was downright _scary_."

She lapses into irritated silence. Megamind blinks, thinks about this. What Roxanne just described sounded…well, it sounded pretty much like a profile of the ideal partner. "I still don't follow."

"Relationships are give and take," she says. "They're about balance. All Peter ever did was give."

 _Aha_. "Oh. And this made you feel selfish."

Roxanne looks at him, eyebrows raised. "I didn't have to tell you that," she says in surprise. "I always had to explain it a lot more to pretty much everyone else."

Megamind shakes his head. His social skills may not be worth much, but balancing give and take is just math. Megamind is good at math. "No, that makes sense. If he wouldn't let you give anything back, then you were always taking."

She nods. "Yes! And it got to the point where I was always second-guessing everything, wondering if he was saying 'okay' because he wanted to, or because he thought I wanted him to, or if he knew I wanted him to say what he wanted but he knew I wanted something different, or…and it wasn't like we were genuinely perfectly matched in all things, either! I mean—I would say 'let's do this thing instead of that thing' and he'd say 'okay, sounds fun,' but then later I would learn from someone else that oh, Peter would have really rather done that other thing, but it's okay, this thing was fun too. Ugh." She scowls. "It was awful. Drove me up the wall and I finally couldn't take it anymore.

"Anyway, I dated a few other people in college. Adam was okay, I guess, until he cheated on me. I liked Nick but he turned out to be gay, _that_ was a fun conversation. Billy was…sweet? And totally brilliant, but weirdly hype about violent revolution. Mariela was wonderful—you'd have liked her, she was in engineering—but she was only in the US for a semester. We tried the long-distance thing for a while, but it didn't work out."

Megamind glances over at her. "Not that I'm not interested," he says, "because I am, but…"

"Right, right. My point." She takes a deep breath. "My point is, everyone I found was either emotionally unavailable or constantly super busy. They were all content to sit back and let me do my own thing. Looking back, I was…being safe, I guess? Sticking to the 'type' I knew, but that type just didn't…well, it was Peter all over again, to varying degrees."

"Okay," Megamind says. "So, what about Chadwick? Where does he come into all this?"

Roxanne takes a deep breath. "Oh, Chad," she sighs. "I met him just after I landed my first job with KCMP. He was _wildly_ different from what I was used to—he would actually challenge me. Stand up for himself, ask for things. Fight with me. He _took_. And he gave, too, don't get me wrong! He gave a lot, especially in the beginning; he really helped a lot with my student loans. And he was head over heels for me. I thought what we had was balanced. I could finally give something back, you know?" She laughs bitterly. "I was an idiot."

Megamind blinks. Frowns. "I missed something, I think. Why…?"

"He turned out to be a total jerk," Roxanne says flatly. "In…a lot of ways. I was with him for almost five years in spite of that, because…well. He seemed like a good idea at the time. Incidentally, that fifth year was the first one you spent kidnapping me." She squeezes his arm. "After that…" She pauses for a moment, and Megamind gets the feeling that she's skipping over something, but she probably has her reasons. He doesn't comment. "Well, after that, the paper ran that piece about how Metro Man and I were dating, and Wayne and I decided to fake it for our mutual benefit," she shrugs, "and that was that! I was pretty disillusioned with the whole relationship thing anyway, so I decided to take some time off from dating." She spreads her hands in an expansive shrug, stepping away and turning to walk backwards for a moment, facing him. "And you know me, Megamind! I'm an independent person! I was perfectly happy on my own. I didn't need anybody else. I didn't _want_ anybody else. I had the perfect life—a job I loved, entertainment and excitement on at least a monthly basis—"

"I object to being called 'entertainment,'" he says, grinning, trying not to miss the warmth of her at his side. She grins back.

"—shut up, you were an entertaining entertainer and you know it—"

"No! Evil! I was not an entertainer, I—"

" _Sure okay_ , Mr. Presentation."

He splutters. "That! That's to make an impression! Hold people's attention!"

Roxanne sends him her very best evil smile. "Yes. Hold their attention by keeping them entertained."

Megamind sighs, scoffs, rolls his eyes, but he doesn't look away quickly enough to hide his smile. Roxanne laughs and twirls ahead of him on the sidewalk, scuffing dry autumn leaves under her feet. "So, yeah: entertainment on a weekly basis," she continues, ticking off on her fingers, "recognition from the people of Metro City, my very own personal cameraman, and I was living debt-free except for rent! Why on earth would I go cluttering my perfect life up with romance I didn't need?"

Then she drops her hands and sighs. Her voice softens a little. "And then I met you. _Really_ met you."

Megamind blinks again, says nothing. But he takes Roxanne's hand when she reaches for him, and he threads his fingers with hers and squeezes as she falls into step beside him again.

"And you were just, pff, well," she sketches an incoherent gesture with her free hand, " _amazing_. And certainly very striking, looks-wise. And I mean, yes, I had already _met_ you, technically, but…I never really got to know you, personally, you know? I knew you weren't going to hurt me, I knew I was safe with you, but…I mean, after you warned me away from your trail those times, I stopped prying. I didn't do much more digging into who you truly were until I started working with Bernard." She snorts. "Well. You, really.

"But, that time that I fell? Your brainbots caught me, and I _know_ it was because you told them to." She glances to the side; the tops of Megamind's ears are turning bright pink, and her hand tightens in his. "I figured out the basics of how their programming works pretty early on—you remember the dive-bombing incident?" She bumps him with her elbow, and he smiles at the memory and nods. "The bots wouldn't have bothered with me on their own when I fell, so they must have been following orders. You saved my life."

"I saved your life _once_ ," he points out. She's giving him far too much credit on that. "From danger I caused in the first place. Metro Man saved your life countless times."

"Mmm…I'm going to disagree with you on that one," Roxanne says thoughtfully. "You can't really save something that isn't actually in danger, can you?"

" _Isn't in danger?_ " he echoes, incredulous. He pulls out of her grasp so he can tick things off on his fingers. "Alligators, flamethrowers, whirling sawblades, the Bootwheel of Death, the—the Pineapple of Doom—the—"

"Brainbots swooping in to catch me if I fell! Knots that never once pulled loose! A kidnapping chair designed to _auto-dehydrate_ in the event of an actual explosion so I wouldn't be impaled! And, Megamind—you thought I didn't notice, but I did." Her mouth curls into a smile that Megamind swears is positively _evil_ , and he would know. "You set the clocks back. Twice." She scoffs in her throat and slips her arm around his waist. "Yeah, I was in some _real danger_ from you."

He huffs, but can't help smiling when she pulls him close. "Five times," he says, bending his own arm across the small of his back to take her hand again and squeeze.

"What?"

"I reset the countdown for your detonators five times." He shrugs, trying to look unruffled. "As long as we're counting, you might as well know."

She laughs and leans against him. They're entering the residential areas to the north of town, row homes and duplexes that are more heavily decorated than the shop windows and apartment buildings. "Regardless. I noticed. I never doubted you were, you know, _eee_ evil," mimicking his old inflection, "but I did know you weren't going to hurt me. I knew I could trust you. I knew you weren't _bad_ -evil." She looks at him. "Do you know why I'm telling you all this?"

Megamind shakes his head. "I haven't the faintest idea." _But I'm not going to complain_.

"It's because I want you to know, _I know_ what conventionally perfect looks like. I don't want it. It's not _my_ perfect. I want someone who will fight me, argue with me, frown sometimes and tell me what they do and do not want—someone who treats me like an _equal_. And Pavel—" She pauses, makes a face, lowers her voice. " _Megamind_ , you are smarter than I will ever be, but you don't talk down to me."

He grins. "Not usually."

"Okay, not usually," she agrees, laughing. "But you don't, you really don't! And I don't have to worry that you're not telling me something, or you're too busy, I don't have to worry that if we're fighting you'll haul off and slap me. My point is…you are the best thing that's ever happened to me. Best partner I've ever had." She pulls away from him and pushes her hands into the pockets of her coat, feeling her ears heat. "Anyway. I just thought you should know that."

When he says nothing, she glances to the side. The way he's looking at her—marveling and fond and just totally smitten—makes her heart turn over, a little bit. "And," she says, before he can say anything, "you're probably wondering why I brought that up, and in the interest of relieving my conscience: you left your notebook lying open. The one by the bed?" Megamind freezes, and Roxanne winces apologetically. "I'm sorry."

Mortified, he covers his eyes with a hand. "You probably think I'm a total dweeb," he mutters.

Roxanne smiles and pulls his hand away, twines their fingers together. "I probably think you're a sweetheart who doesn't want me to worry. Can I ask what it's all about?"

Megamind grimaces. "It's…it builds neural pathways. When I start to have doubts, I just…remind myself. That's all." He swallows. "You weren't supposed to see."

He really wishes she'd let the subject drop, but Roxanne is quiet for a moment and then says, "I just want to make sure we don't have a communication problem, is all," and that makes Megamind's stomach turn over.

"No!" he exclaims, more quickly and more loudly than he had meant to, and he's dimly aware he's starting to freak out and that that is _stupid_ , but he can't seem to help it. "No, there's no problem, I promise. I do."

"Megamind," she says, but he keeps going.

"It's just—I can handle it. On my own. You _don't_ need to worry, Roxanne, really, I'm fine. _We_ ," he says, wishing he could just shut up, "are fine. Aren't we? I thought we were—"

She steps into the relative shade of a half-naked maple and drags him around to face her, her free hand curling around his jaw to hold him steady as she kisses him, long and slow. His heart hammers against his ribcage, panicked and fluttery; after a moment, Roxanne lets go of his chin and slides her hand around to the back of his head. She tugs her other hand out of his grip and presses it into the middle of his back, holding him against her.

"Hush," she says softly when Megamind finally comes up for air, and she touches his face, rubs a thumb over his cheek. "We are fine. Don't worry." She raises her eyebrows a little. "Didn't you hear anything I just said?"

 _Communicate_ , he thinks at himself, _and get a grip_. _For the love of the Higgs boson, haven't I made any progress at all? It's been months!_ And he has made progress, he really has. He's made a lot of progress. Irritated with himself, he says, "You implied I was right for you."

Roxanne blinks, and some humor finds its way into her expression. "I did only imply, didn't I? I'm sorry, sometimes I still forget you need to be told."

And if that isn't condescending, Megamind doesn't know what is. But it's also true, and he knows she didn't mean it the way it sounded, so he just bites his tongue and nods. Roxanne sighs, and they start walking again. "Give me a minute," she says, "I'm not good at this. You're the one who always knows exactly what to say at the drop of a hat."

That makes him blink. _I am?_ he thinks. He isn't sure where she got that impression, but he knows better than to interrupt when Roxanne is wearing her Thinking Face, so he focuses instead on the few orange leaves that still cling to the maple trees lining the road and the small children who are out and about with their parents. Some of the kids are already in their costumes, trying to get the proverbial bit between their teeth, begging for Mom or Dad to let them go trick-or-treating already, come _on_.

After a few minutes, Roxanne bites her lip and nods. "Okay, I think I've got it. Somehow, through some random, hilarious stroke of irony, I have found everything I wasn't looking for but could ever want in you. I don't have to worry constantly that you're just being polite. I don't have to call you constantly and tell you where I'm going and who I'm with. I don't have to worry about you getting volatile after a bad day. You talk to me about things. Well, most things." She takes his hand again. "And I can talk to you, too. I feel like I can talk to you about…anything. Everything. You're my friend, and that's so important. As long as you feel the same way, we're fine."

He swallows. "I do," he says. "Feel the same way. And I am…getting better about not worrying. I swear. I am."

Roxanne nods. "Good, that's good. If you don't _want_ to talk about it, that's completely okay! As long as you know you _can_ talk to me about it if you do want to, okay? That's all I meant." She frowns a little bit, sniffling in the cold air. "'Communication problem' probably wasn't the best choice of words, there, huh?"

He laughs at that. "Probably not," he agrees. Then he swallows again, hard, and says—because Roxanne told him a personal thing, a difficult thing, and this is what he's supposed to do now, yes? reciprocate? respond to the things she said, even if it feels scary? especially considering what she just told him about why she left Peter—he says, "I do try to tell you my, um. My preferences. I do try to be honest, I—but sometimes," he squeezes her fingers, "sometimes they change. I don't even realize. Until afterwards. If I would have preferred something different. Does that make sense?"

Roxanne blinks, looking startled.

"But I'm not, I'm not just going along with what you want to do and hiding my discontentment," Megamind says quickly, because she said that was the thing that killed it with Peter and while he _does not_ want to be Peter, he does want to be honest, "I really do want the same thing _in that moment_ , but...later, when I'm alone, I think—I think, was that what I wanted? Really? And, um. I don't always know the answer to that."

She's quiet for a moment, then asks, "Is this something that only happens with me? Does it happen with Minion, too?"

"Not with Minion, so much," Megamind says. "But I have noticed—people on, on certain boards? In meetings? People I'm familiar with, the ones I respect, I. I have noticed it occasionally with them. I'll, um. I'll hear myself agree and then I'll think, why did I agree with that?"

He gulps again and pulls her arm around him, curves his arm around the small of his own back again so he can have her arm wrapped around his body and his hand in hers at the same time. He wants to hide, can feel the drive to pull away rising like a tide in the back of his mind, mounting with every second she doesn't speak— _shouldn't be telling her this, going to ruin everything, going to be the nail in the coffin of the disastrous horrible burden of dating you_ —he pulls closer instead. He loves this woman. She loves him. _Stop_ , he tells himself. _Stop. She just finished telling you why she likes dating you. Everything has been fine today. Everything is still fine_. Even though it doesn't feel fine at all, anymore.

"I love you," Roxanne says, and some of the hissing in his mind eases off. "I...thank you for telling me? Huh."

"I don't know if there's anything to be done about it," he says, unhappy and trying to hide it. "But. It seemed like. Something you would want to know."

She looks over at him. "You didn't want to tell me that at all, did you," she says, and Megamind shakes his head. Roxanne takes a deep breath and cuddles him against her, squeezes his hand where it's pinned behind him. "I appreciate it. And, um...if it happens and you realize later, you wanted something different, you can tell me. We can talk about it."

"But," he says, "but it's bad to bring up past wrongs. Especially when they weren't wrong at the time. Sometimes I don't realize for days."

Roxanne smiles a little. She's suspected for a while, Megamind has been researching relationships—he says things sometimes, like that, that he must have read somewhere. On one hand, she would much prefer that he talk to her if he has questions; on the other hand, she can't be his go-to resource for everything. And it is a reminder, one of many, of how badly he wants to do this right. "I know," she says. "But it sounds like…it sounds like it might not be that simple, for you. You can't tell me in the moment if you don't realize in the moment, right? So…tell me when you do realize, and we'll figure it out. Okay?"

That's going to be difficult. Megamind still doesn't really talk about his feelings if he isn't prompted or pushed to do so, although he has been trying harder to acknowledge them to himself, at least. Still, he nods.

"Sorry," he says, after a moment. 

"Don't be," Roxanne tries, but Megamind shakes his head hard, at that.

"Don't—don't tell me not to be sorry," he says. "Don't. Don't do that. I am sorry. I feel. Sorry. For, for putting this on you. Being this way, still." He releases a short, sharp laugh. "We were going to have a nice time. And, and now…well. Anyway. I am sorry."

Roxanne takes a couple seconds, then takes a deep breath. "You can be sorry," she says. "It's…it's okay to be sorry. But I'm still having a nice time, and I'm certainly not upset with you. Do you want to go back? We can go back."

Megamind shakes his head again. He does, in fact, want to go home, but he can already tell: if he does that, he's only going to withdraw and pour himself into the first project he can find. And this, with Roxanne, this date—he was looking forward to it all week. _You can still have a nice time_ , he tells himself. _You're just being reactive. Stop_. "You're really having a nice time," he says, and Roxanne nods.

"I really am," she replies. "I'm sorry, too; I didn't mean to make you feel…inadequate?"

"Burdensome," he says, without meaning to.

"You aren't—"

" _Don't tell me that_ ," he says, cutting her off, "don't—that only makes it worse, that's not—it doesn't help, I'm sorry, I'm—you shouldn't have to tell me that and it doesn't help."

Roxanne lets go of his hand and grips his upper arm, instead, turning him to face her on the sidewalk so she can hug him hard. Megamind stops, startled.

"Okay," Roxanne says. Megamind stands like a stick, but she doesn't let go, won't let go unless he asks her to. "Okay. I won't tell you not to. Sweetheart, you feel whatever you feel and we'll take it from there, okay? I just…" Megamind slowly brings his arms up to settle around her back, and she swallows. " _I wish_ you didn't feel like that. Can I say that? Is that okay?" Megamind nods. Roxanne breathes, and then leans back to look at his face. "Okay, then—I wish you didn't feel like a burden. I love you, and I love being with you, and I don't feel like you're a burden at all, and I'm _so proud of you_ for telling me all this, especially when you didn't want to." She tips her head forward to rest against his. "I love you."

"You love me," he echoes. She nods against him. "You love me. You aren't. Humoring me."

"I love you," Roxanne says again, firmly. If she hadn't seen his notebook, that last comment might have thrown or hurt her, but...there's more going on here than just her. Minion told her, months ago, Megamind's insecurities are nothing to do with her. That's still hard to believe, sometimes, hard not to take personally, but she's trying. It's getting easier. "I love you, I'm not just saying that to make you feel better. I mean it. I don't feel like you're a burden, and I'm not upset. I meant it when I said you're the best thing that ever happened to me, and that hasn't changed, and I want to figure this out with you, okay?"

He nods.

"And if…tell you what," Roxanne says, inspiration striking, "if you feel…weird, or bad, and you can't talk about it or don't want to talk about it, squeeze my hand twice? And I'll squeeze back. To tell you I love you and it's okay. Okay?"

Megamind moves to look at her. "Okay," he says slowly. "Hm. We can…try that. Yes. And if…if we aren't holding hands, I'll…click? Twice?" He demonstrates, clicking in his subvoice.

Roxanne smiles, nods. "That's perfect," she says. "And I'll click back. And if something _isn't_ okay, I'll tell you, and we'll figure it out."

He nods again, nods agreement. "Yes," he says. "Yes. We'll figure it out. Together. I love you, too." He takes her hand and turns to start walking again, away from home and the Lair and hopefully toward a distraction. He still feels…wrong, but…it's not as bad as it was. Getting better. It's okay to feel this way. He's okay. He can deal with this. And! She told him, just now, what she didn't like about past relationships. And why she likes dating him. He doesn't have to wonder, he just needs to remember. He can do that. He can.

He takes a deep breath and changes the subject away from his insecurities before Roxanne can say anything else—he knows one thing that's sure to distract her from pretty much any line of thinking. "How's your mother?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relationships aren't always as clear-cut as we sometimes wish they would be, but we work with the people we love to figure out what works. It's interesting to write Megamind as emotional as I headcanon him being -- I tend to be a flat line, emotionally, unless I'm feeling something Really Hard.
> 
> Also, hand to God, I swear, I wrote this before I had any idea that people use the name "Chad" to refer to a douchey guy and now I feel like it's too late to change it (he's mentioned in more than just this chapter, unlike Cheerily in True North, so I feel like he's too established). Probably I will refer to him by his whole first name more in this version than in the original. Also, apologies to the Chads of the world, I'm sure many of you are lovely people.
> 
> Anyway, here we are again! I'm going to try to stick to chapter-a-week updates, but we'll see how that goes. Fingers crossed!
> 
> [Link to Tabby's art sans photobucket logo](https://i1223.photobucket.com/albums/dd508/tabbydragon/megs_scarf.jpg), at least on my screen.  
> [Link to youtube video with the sounds of Jupiter.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3fqE01YYWs)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "once a week updates" HA HA HA ~~i'm so sorry~~

Roxanne sighs. "She's better, thanks. The doctor said the surgery went really well and Drew is making sure she gets to her physical therapy appointments, but I'll probably head down for a visit later this month. Or maybe for Thanksgiving?" She grimaces. "I haven't visited in years, I feel bad."

Megamind hesitates. "I should…probably stay here, I think, for that."

Roxanne groans and wrinkles her nose. "That might be a good idea," she admits, sounding reluctant. "I don't want to leave you out of family stuff, but…"

"No, no, I understand," Megamind quickly assures her. He doesn't actually feel left out about this. "I don't want to risk anyone finding out about us sooner than we planned. I know that's not what you meant," he adds, "but…still."

It's a valid point and they both know it. Megamind is getting better about handling himself in social situations, but extended day-to-day exposure to Roxanne's family might be something he couldn't pull off and keep up the charade. Not at this point, anyway.

"Yeah. Also, I don't think I'd ever hear the end of it from my mother and brother if I bring my new boyfriend to stay when they haven't had me to themselves in a while." Roxanne sighs again, then visibly brightens. "But I'll see about bringing you home for Christmas! Mom might actually be okay with both of us coming to stay for a few days then. And even if she isn't," she adds with a laugh, "I know Drew definitely will be. He's dying to meet you."

Megamind chuckles. "That's one encounter I am actually looking forward to."

Megamind and Drew have been emailing back and forth with startling enthusiasm, but they haven't actually spoken yet; both of them seem to regard the phone as off-limits. "That would make it too _easy_ ," Drew had complained when Roxanne asked him about it, and Megamind doesn't really care for phones in general.

"Well, they're both still wildly curious about my mysterious nuclear-particle-whatever-physics boyfriend who somehow knows so much about the neurochemistry stuff Drew is working on," Roxanne tells him. "So far Mom's guessed all the relevant professors at Metro University. I finally had to tell her you weren't a teacher. She sounded relieved."

"Something wrong with professors?"

Roxanne makes a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat. "She seems to have gotten it into her head that they don't make enough money."

Megamind blinks at her. "What? Where did she get _that_ impression?"

"Don't ask me," Roxanne says with a shrug. "I have no idea. I'd have to be ridiculously high-maintenance for that to be true. Not to mention shallow—I have my own career; it's not like I need a second income." She rolls her eyes. "Mom just has opinions about funny things, sometimes. Guess that's one of them."

Megamind just shakes his head. Roxanne doesn't seem to require 'maintenance' at all that he's noticed yet, and it's been months. He's wondered—worried—if he's missing something, some special cue that should tell him he isn't doing enough for her, but Roxanne would say something if that were the case. He knows she would.

"Although, out of curiosity…" Roxanne begins, then bites her lip and shakes her head. "Never mind."

"What?"

"No," she says, "it's not the sort of question I should ask. A relationship faux pas."

"Okay, _now_ I'm curious," Megamind says, amusement creeping into his voice as he tilts his head at her. He squeezes her hand. "And you know I wouldn't notice a social misstep on your part. What is it?"

Roxanne takes a deep breath, holds it for a moment, then blurts, "Where do you get money?"

Whatever question Megamind was expecting, it wasn't that one; he does a bit of a double-take. Roxanne laughs at his expression. "I'm serious!" she exclaims. "I've been trying to figure it out for years, now—your equipment isn't cheap, and you go through literal _tons_ of scrap metal—and I've seen some of the figures you're tossing around to repair the city. They aren't small."

"I'm a supervillain," he shrugs, then makes a face and corrects himself. "I _was_ a supervillain. Of course I have cash."

"But you returned most of your ill-gotten gains," Roxanne says. "At least, I thought you did."

Megamind snorts and waves a hand at her. "No, you're right, I did. Well, most of it, but the city's repairs were all done legally—part of it was simply redirecting everything I would have been spending on villainy these last few months, and for the rest I liquidated some of my assets. Sold a few paintings here and there, a few old books. That sort of thing."

"Where do _you_ get old paintings?" Roxanne asks, baffled. "A few old books? What old books?"

"Would you like a list?" Megamind grins. "I'm pretty sure I can remember everything."

She gives his arm a playful slap. "I would _love_ a list," she tells him. "I am wildly curious."

Still grinning, he nods. " _De Rechtvaardige Rechters_ , a fifteenth century Van Eyck stolen in 1911. A Rembrandt landscape. There was a five million dollar reward offered for information leading to the return of thirteen pieces to a Boston museum—I got the reward in September; the person who stole them passed away a couple years ago—Leonardo da Vinci's _Codex Leicester_ , Ptolemy's _Geographia_ , and the _Capture of Oechalia_ —and let me tell you what, that last one was a serious pain in the butt to track down, I've been sitting on it for _years_. Also a Faberge egg and a Stradivarius."

Roxanne blinks. "Stradivarius? A violin? A violin can't possibly be worth _that_ much money."

Megamind's grin turns wicked. "Oh, I think you'll find that it can, if it was made in 1683. It can, in fact, be sold for one and a half million dollars if you find the right buyer. I shipped it off last week."

Roxanne stares at him, now totally boggled. "Where did you _find_ all this stuff?"

He hums. "I'm reasonably skilled at locating lost treasures. A lot of the people in the Prison for the Criminally Gifted are thieves of some kind or other; they taught me a lot about…um, finding and keeping, so to speak?" He sends her a nervous smile, uncertain how she'll react to this. "Also, breaking and entering. Also- _also_ , hiring people to do the breaking and entering for you." His expression softens a little, goes nostalgic. "For a while, I thought maybe I could become some kind of famous collector—but I gave that up after spending nearly ten years searching for _Capture of Oechalia_."

"Huh." She's quiet for a while, turning that over in her head. "Okay. Interesting."

Megamind grins. "You have several questions."

"I have several questions!" she exclaims. "I mean, okay, timeline—you must have started treasure hunting when you were in your teens, right? But you didn't leave the city then, as far as I know, so you must have hired other people to do most of the legwork. That can't have been cheap."

"Ah," he says. "Yes. You know, it's surprising what you can forge with high school art supplies," Megamind says, grinning harder, and Roxanne remembers the detail on the little sketches that bloom at the edges of his blueprints when he gets tired.

"Okay, but…still! And where would you sell the forgeries?"

"Directly to an interested buyer," he says. "Thieves and forgers have…connections to people of interest. Haunt Sebestyen was willing to speak for me, get me in with some of hir contacts, and they were able to hook me up. Besides," he adds, with a sudden, knife-sharp grin, "if you can find the _right_ buyer, you'll find he doesn't care enough about authenticity to do much more than a few surface tests. All he really wants is something he can hang in his thirtieth-floor office to impress people in the same tax bracket." He shrugs. "So you sell him a 'Vermeer' that was stolen five years prior for fifty million—"

"Fifty _million_ —"

"—and a year later you sell him an 'early Pollock' for another twenty million—"

" _Megamind that is seventy million dollars you stole from_ —"

"—and you're set to get started!" he finishes, beaming. "Oh, don't look so scandalized; the real Vermeer was easily worth four times what he paid for the fake. He must have known something was up. Besides, the man's son put me through hell back in shool; he _owed_ me that seventy million."

Roxanne stumbles, and Megamind makes a startled sound and grips her hand harder. "Bob Scott's office is on the thirtieth floor," she says faintly, as she regains her footing.

"It certainly is," Megamind says, leaning against her and sounding absolutely delighted. "And do you want to know the best part?" At Roxanne's wary nod, he says, "That fake Vermeer? The real one was one of the paintings stolen from that museum in Boston I told you about. So now he _knows_ the one he bought was forged. And he has no idea who he bought it from!"

Roxanne lets go of his hand so she can rub her temples. Megamind hesitates, then slips his arm around her waist.

"Let me get this straight," Roxanne says. She doesn't typically enjoy feeling like someone is holding onto her, but Megamind had a Moment, earlier; she's willing to make an exception for a minute or so. Just long enough that she's not obviously pulling away. "You effectively stole _seventy million dollars_ from Bob Scott when you were in high school and you used it as seed money for treasure hunting and villainy."

"Villainy isn't cheap," he exclaims. "You said it yourself! The power plant was abandoned, yes, but the warehouses around it weren't. So I had to find out who owned them, and make offers, and renovate the power plant, and lay the groundwork for adding two nuclear reactors, and do all this under various assumed names so as not to arouse suspicion…" He trails off, shrugs again. "Seventy million goes faster than you think."

"Okay, so, after the art sales?" Roxanne asks. She shrugs him off and links arms with him, instead. There, that's better. "Villainy doesn't exactly generate income."

"I have a lot of…" Megamind pauses, searching for the best way to put this. "…Savings, shall we say?" Roxanne cocks her head at him, and he clears his throat. "A few years back, Minion and I were testing a new maritime submarine, just seeing how it held up under Pacific conditions. Unmanned, of course; we were piloting it remotely. And we went looking for a shipwreck while we were out there. Minion knows how currents work, and I know how physics and fluid dynamics work, and…we found some pretty valuable stuff. Stuff that, in all honesty, I probably shouldn't have kept, but the ship was Japanese and went down in 1945 and none of its cargo was art or artifacts, so—again—finders keepers, as far as I'm concerned."

Roxanne's eyes narrow a little and she starts to smile. "Wait, is _that_ why you were grinning through that special we watched about wreck diving?" When Megamind just laughs a little bit and glances away, her mouth falls open. "It _is!_ What ship? C'mon, you can't just leave me hanging now."

Megamind can feel his ears turning pink. He ducks his head and looks away, still laughing. "The…okay. We _may_ have found the _Awa Maru_."

Roxanne pauses, frowning. "Wasn't that the one with the five million dollars in gold and silver and stuff?"

"Billion," he says without thinking, and quickly adds, "But it ended up being only four and a half. Not five. And the cargo was mostly nickel and rubber, and the rubber was almost entirely ruined by seawater. So…more like three billion, in the end."

Her jaw drops and she goggles at him. " _Megamind!_ "

" _Shhh!_ " He looks around frantically, but no one seems to have heard. "Not so loud!"

"Five _billion?_ " Roxanne squeaks.

"Three," he insists, lips twitching. He's never seen Roxanne's eyebrows go so far up her forehead before. But he doesn't want her to fixate on that so he bulls ahead and continues, "Anyway, so I took the proceeds from the shipwrecked nickel and invested quite a bit of it into some low-risk funds. The interest on that works as…sort of a personal endowment, I suppose? I've also sold a few patents, over the years." He smiles ruefully. "I may have never had a conventional job, but you can tell your mother not to worry. I can take care of both of us perfectly well. Money is not something we will have to worry about." He glances at Roxanne and—well, she hasn't reacted badly; maybe he can tease a little? He can relax. And as long as he's going to be talking about his finances, he might as well brag a _little_ bit, right? He is proud of himself for doing so well so early in life, even if he did it by playing a broken system. He clears his throat. "I do feel a little bad about Enron, though…"

Roxanne takes the bait more enthusiastically than Megamind was expecting. She was already shocked, and this is the icing on the cake. " _Enron?_ " she gasps. "What—wait, you can't possibly have— _Enron?_ "

Megamind's eyes are dancing. "The executives were selling their shares and I had actually been reading the 10-Ks they were sending out. I know bullshit when it's fed to me—no company that was doing what they were doing can possibly make the kinds of returns they were reporting—and they were telling shareholders to buy more, buy more. And I said to myself, 'Megamind,' I said, 'that's _fishy_ ,' so I sold when prices hit eighty-four." He shrugs, grinning.

"But," Roxanne says, still staring at him, "but _Enron_. Enron."

"Yes," Megamind says, "Enron. I made almost sixteen and a half million dollars off of Enron shortly before they tanked, then turned around and used that money to build the submarine!"

Roxanne takes a deep breath, opens her mouth, closes it again, and then says weakly, "I think I need to sit down."

One of the few homes on the street that's devoid of Halloween decorations also has a few newspapers sitting on the front porch, so Megamind steers Roxanne over and they sit in the dingy white wicker chairs there. Megamind is grinning and Roxanne is still staring into space, bewildered and amazed. He feels a little bit smug about it; Roxanne is not easily surprised anymore, so he doesn't interrupt her while she thinks and instead takes the opportunity to look around a little bit.

The house is the last on the row, and although the neighbor's side sports a minimum of porch furniture and yard decoration, whoever owns the porch he's sitting on obviously cares about their gardens despite the lack of space. Fall-blooming flowers are everywhere, there's not a weed in sight. It's rather pretty, though entirely too organized for Megamind's taste—organization is for papers and experiments, not flowers. The sprawling jumble of tall stalks and shrubs on either side of the porch across the street is much more appealing, as far as he's concerned.

He glances around restlessly while Roxanne stares and his gaze falls on the newspapers scattered over the porch. They're still in their plastic bags, and he frowns and scooches them under a wicker chair with his toe—he of all people knows leaving multiple newspapers on a doorstep is a great way to get your home robbed.

"How," Roxanne says, breaking the silence and making him jump, "in the name of all that is good and green on this earth did you buy enough shares in Enron to make _sixteen million dollars_ off of them."

Megamind grins and puts his elbows on the arms of the chair, steepling his fingers in front of him out of habit. "That was actually one of the first major investments I ever made. I kept close track of them." He's really enjoying the shocked expression on Roxanne's face. He knows of a few other villains who don't worry about their finances, but most of them got where they are by exploiting people more directly. The vast majority of people in Megamind's former line of work do struggle somewhat when it comes to making ends meet.

And…now that he's thinking about it…yes, it is nice to get to talk about it, finally. Megamind brags a lot, but only about stuff that doesn't actually matter, and he really is proud of himself for this. He shrugs and slouches down in his chair, grinning at Roxanne over the tips of his fingers. "You would keep track, too, if you spent a million bucks on stocks in one company. In retrospect, that wasn't very smart. It worked out well for me, but it was definitely a stupid move."

"But where did you get a million dollars to start off with? This is before the art forging and the shipwreck, right?"

Megamind's smile slips a couple notches. "Ah," he says. "Yes. I was…young. There was monetary compensation from the PHED. It wasn't that much, it was less than a quarter of that, but I'm a fast learner and a crack hand at counting cards, so…" He does his best to arrange his features into a sheepish expression, but 'sheepish' isn't something Megamind wears well; he only manages to look diabolical. "I can't help it. It's just something that _happens_ , you know?"

"The Fed? Wait, like the bank?" Roxanne's brow furrows. "Why would they give you money?"

Megamind snorts. "No, not the Fed, the PHED. Paranormal, Holistic, and Extraterrestrial Department. In exchange for, quote-unquote, 'services rendered.' Which is a bigger load of crap than the Enron debacle, if you can believe it." He shakes his head, looking disgusted. "Services rendered," he mutters, rubbing his left hand up over the back of his head before dropping it back into his lap. "As if any of that was remotely voluntary."

"Oh!" Roxanne looks for a moment as if she's going to ask a question, then says, "Sorry. Right." Then she frowns. "Holistic?"

"Yes, I asked about that, too," he says, frowning down at his hand and flexing his fingers. Then his eyebrows shoot up and his tone turns cheerful. "The most popular explanation is it was the founder's idea of a joke and it stuck."

"Huh," Roxanne says. Megamind doesn't say anything to that, although sometimes it bothers him when she obviously wants to say something but doesn't. "Right, so. Go on."

"There's not much else to say," he says. "I…got lucky, really. I had people to teach me how to work various systems, and I've made some good decisions since then. You—"

The door to the other half of the duplex swings open, and he stops talking. Despite the fact that it's mid-afternoon and the sun is low in the sky, the man who steps out and reaches for his afternoon newspaper is clad in a bathrobe and slippers and his dark blonde hair is tangled. There are shadows under his eyes, lines at the corners of his mouth, and a surprised expression on his face that lapses quickly into one of carefully-schooled boredom.

"Roxanne Ritchi," he says, sounding utterly unsurprised even though he's still blinking in astonishment. "I didn't think I gave you my address."

Roxanne gapes back at him for a moment before she recovers. "I was—we were just sitting," she says, but her tone is over-bright. Too bright to be normal. Still, she gets to her feet and goes to shake his hand across the porch's partition. "We were wandering around to see the decorations and got tired."

Her attempt at small talk falls flat on its face despite her chipper tone. It's amazing, Megamind realizes, how very awkward some silences can be. There ought to be a system of measurement. Awkward units. This would be a ten.

Roxanne tries again, almost wincing as she does so. "…How goes the, ah, the job hunt?"

Bernard's expression sours. "Still nothing," he says, and sighs loudly. "I'm not exactly the most _employable_ person in the world." Then his bored gaze flicks to the dark-haired man who's just stood up behind Roxanne, and he stiffens. The transformation is immediate and remarkable—he goes from irritated lethargy to focused hatred in half a heartbeat. " _You_ ," he hisses. "Get off my porch."

Roxanne blinks, fumbles. "Bernard, I think you're confused—this is my boyfriend, Pavel—"

"No," Megamind says quietly, without looking away from Bernard's angry face. He isn't really surprised Bernard wasn't taken in by the disguise. "No, don't bother. He knows."

"Boyfriend, huh?" Bernard's lip curls. His hackles are up; if he were anything but human, he would be snarling. "You're a lucky man."

"I am," Megamind agrees. He keeps his tone neutral, but he would be sweating under his disguise if his skin worked that way. How is he supposed to act? What is he supposed to say? Socializing is not his forte, interpersonal conflict even less so, and he wants desperately to be somewhere, _anywhere_ , else. He thinks longingly of prison. Nobody ever bothers him in prison.

Bernard's eyes narrow to furious slits. "Very lucky," he says. "I think she can do better."

"I agree." The unspoken _but Roxanne doesn't seem to think so_ is audible to everyone present, and it makes the silence that follows about twice as awkward as the last one.

For a moment, they simply stand and stare at each other. Something dark and ugly flickers behind Bernard's eyes. Megamind looks every bit as uncomfortable as he feels. "I hate you," Bernard finally whispers, and Megamind exhales.

"I know," he replies heavily. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"It's not worth much," Bernard snaps. He has too much self-control to allow himself to raise his voice but his fists are clenched and he's breathing hard, eyes snapping sparks. "You ruined my _life_. I lost my job. I lost all credibility. You blew all my theories on you out of the water when you switched sides, you know that? Nobody wants to hire someone who's been wrong on all counts for the majority of his career." He snatches a folded piece of paper from the pocket of his bathrobe, brandishes it like a gun. Megamind flinches. "And on top of that, I'm being evicted! My credit score is now garbage, I can't get any loans, I can't pay my bills. If I don't pay my rent in full in two weeks, I'm homeless. And I owe it all to _you_." His nostrils flare.

Hm. Well. This probably should have occurred to Megamind sooner, but with everything else that's been happening…

Megamind doesn't know what to say, but he has to say _something_ , he can't just stand there like a lump, so he says the first thing that pops into his head. "I—I'll pay your rent. It's the least I can do—"

"Damn right it's the least you can do, and it's a temporary fix at _best_." When he's calm, which is pretty much always, Bernard is lethargic, condescending. He rarely opens his eyes all the way, and he rarely raises his voice. Angry Bernard is something else entirely—his shoulders are squared and his movements are small and sharp, like those of a wind-up toy soldier, but his voice is still low and his eyes are still at half-mast and that makes it worse than if he shouted. "Can you find me a job? Can you get me off of the Chairmen's list? Can you—" He cuts himself off, shakes his head. Megamind is surprised he doesn't spit; he certainly looks like he wants to. "Keep your _charity_."

Megamind blinks. "The chairmen?"

Bernard bares his teeth in a silent growl. "Do you have _any idea_ what kind of—of _people_ I've had to go to, just to get enough money to live on? The kind of things I've had to agree to do?" He shoves a hand through his hair, making it stand on end more than usual. It looks like he hasn't washed it in a while.

Megamind decides to steer the conversation into safer waters. "I don't know about any chairmen," he says, "but I can get you a job with the PHED."

Bernard chokes on a harsh laugh. "Are you kidding? They were the first people I called. They wanted nothing to do with me."

But Megamind isn't finished. While this doesn't feel like the best way to deal with this situation, exactly, he can't think of a better way off the top of his head. "Who did you talk to? Give me a name."

"Mortacci," Bernard snaps, and Megamind's lips thin.

"I'm not surprised," he says. "Pollyanna Mortacci has had it in for me from day one—as far as she's concerned, you're a plague rat for even associating with me. Anyone else in the department would have hired you as soon as you called. Listen," he says, and takes a card from his pocket, flips it over, scribbles a name and a phone number. Hands the card to Bernard. "Call her. Tell her I recommended you. She'll tell you where to send your résumé."

Bernard glances at the card. "This is a D.C. area code."

"That's where headquarters is located," Megamind agrees.

"Do you know how expensive it is to live in Washington?" Bernard rolls his eyes, sneering. "Let alone move there with nothing. With _less_ than nothing. Thank you again for that, _by the way_."

Megamind takes a step forward. The conversation is still horrible, but it's a conversation, and he's getting over his embarrassment and his shock and he's beginning to be able to think again. And, as usual, his brain dances six or seven steps ahead of what's actually going on. "Bernard," he says, "I owe you three ways. For your face, for your name, and for your time." Bernard's eyes narrow, but he says nothing. Encouraged, Megamind continues, "So—I will repay you three ways. First, your rent. And any other debts relating to my, ah, intrusion. I'll take care of them. Also your credit score; I'll return it to what it was before all of this." He pauses. "I wish you had come to me about this," he adds, frowning. "I didn't think of it, but I—if I had known—I would have done something sooner."

Bernard looks like he wants to sneer again, but can't quite manage it. It's obvious he's still angry, but there's a glimmer of suspicious hope trying to creep into his eyes. He settles for a scathing, "Good luck with the credit score. It was perfect. I never defaulted on a single payment and I paid everything in full. And if you want to take care of my debts, fine, but I warn you, I've got school loans I'm still paying off and Wells Fargo's interest rates are _disgusting_."

Megamind is unfazed. Fixing numbers in systems is a cakewalk, as far as he's concerned. "Second," he says, "I will cover you in Washington or wherever else you choose to go until you receive your first paycheck. Within reason," he adds. "I won't pay for you to just sit around at home."

Bernard doesn't move. "And third?"

Megamind hesitates, but finally tells him, "A favor."

This is not something he would usually offer, and Bernard probably knows that; his expression turns hungry. "What are the terms?"

"I would prefer it to be at least marginally legal," Megamind says carefully. "But if it isn't, I'll still see what I can do. I won't kill anyone, and I don't want to ruin anyone else's life." He stops talking and waits. Bernard is considering.

When the other man sucks his upper lip between his teeth and bites it, Megamind knows he's reached a conclusion.

"This should be enough to repay my debt to you," Megamind says. He's being hideously formal, here, which he doesn't enjoy—the speech patterns really aren't his. But he's run into Bernard before, a few times; the man is ridiculously bookish. The whole 'thrice owed, thrice paid' thing seems to have appeased him somewhat. "You can take as much time as you need to consider it," Megamind begins, when Bernard doesn't speak, but the man shakes his head.

"That won't be necessary. Wait here." He doesn't hang around for a response, just turns on his heel and slams the door behind him.

Megamind lets out his breath in a rush and sinks back into his chair, jams his hands into the pockets of his coat to keep them from shaking. "That went well," he murmurs, and even he isn't sure if that's meant to be sarcastic or not. "Much better than I was expecting it to." He heaves a sigh and leans back, tucking his chin against his scarf. "Much as I hate to just…throw money at problems until they go away, I can't deny that it's effective." The sides of his mouth turn up in a bitterly thin, humorless smile, and for a split second Roxanne is looking at someone very different from the Megamind she knows. "Everyone can be bought."

And he does owe Bernard. He stole the man's face and lived as him for months; this really is the least he can do. Megamind does not enjoy owing people anything.

Bernard's door slams open again and he storms back out onto the porch. He looks, if it's possible, even more wildly rumpled than before and he's clutching a manila folder in one white-knuckled hand. "There's a woman," he says without preamble, and thrusts the folder at Megamind, who half-rises and leans forward to take it. "In South Sudan. I want you to get her out. The US keeps denying her visas and now Sudan's stepped up security, too." His expression sours. "There's…been a scare of some kind."

Megamind opens the folder, then takes a pair of spectacles from his jacket pocket and slips them on.

Bernard can't resist. "Since when do you wear glasses?"

"I don't," Megamind says distractedly as he thumbs through the papers. "Pavel does. Got Lasik back in '05, now he just uses them for reading. Or so the story goes. Oh, now _this_ is interesting," he adds, removing one sheet of paper from the rest and holding it up to the light. He squints at it for a moment, then looks over the tops of his pince-nez at Bernard. "She has mob connections?"

Bernard nods. "Sicilian. We think she has relatives here; we're pretty sure it's why her visa applications keep getting shot down."

Megamind purses his lips. "Let me guess, she's illegitimate."

Bernard looks grim. "Can you do it?"

Megamind looks at him, looks back at the papers in his lap. "I think I can," he says after a moment, then nods decisively. "I can. Yes. It will be a challenge, but yes."

Bernard takes a deep breath, and the color leaves his cheeks and then comes flooding back. It's an expression Megamind has seen before, once or twice. Bernard would spend the rest of his life dehydrated on a shelf if it meant getting this woman, whoever she is, safely into the US.

Then he composes himself, returns Megamind's nod. "Good," he says flatly. "Do that and I'll consider us square. And I'm not going to Washington," he adds, and—huh. He sounds very sure of himself. Too sure. Megamind blinks and his attention sharpens—not only does Bernard look and sound completely decisive, he didn't take any time to think about this decision. _There's something else going on here_.

"Where, then?"

Bernard doesn't miss a beat. "South Dakota. Edgemont."

" _South Dakota?_ " Roxanne repeats, incredulous. Bernard doesn't look at her.

Megamind only says, "Why?"

This brings the quirk of a sardonic smile. "Can't tell you," he says. The smile disappears, and he glances at the folder. "How soon can you get her?"

 _Can't_ , Megamind thinks. _Can't tell me, not won't tell me. Interesting_. But he's careful not to show his interest—he blinks, shrugs. "Couple of months, maybe?"

Bernard's face hardens. "How _soon?_ "

Megamind considers. Thinks of names, of plans, of backup plans, of backup plans to backup plans, of more names, of favors and uncollected debts he could leverage…January," he says at last. "Late January. Maybe early February."

Bernard nods again, but it's jerky. Megamind's eyes narrow. Bernard looks like a man who is trying to appear calm but can't remember how to breathe normally. "Skip the debts, screw my credit, just—just get her here, fast. As fast as you can. Whatever it takes."

Megamind is startled, but he doesn't show it and he doesn't ask any other questions. Reasons were not part of the deal. If he isn't allowed to know _why_ , then he won't know why. It's as simple as that. He rises, sticks out his hand. "A pleasure doing business with you, Bernard. I'll be in touch."

"I'm leaving town for good tomorrow morning," Bernard says flatly, ignoring the proffered hand, then turns and goes back inside his house without saying anything else.

Roxanne's stares from the closed door to Megamind's thoughtful features. "What was _that_ all about?"

Megamind lowers his hand. "I'm not sure. I expect we'll find out in February." He glances at Roxanne, wishing he could explain the irrational nervousness that's struck so abruptly. He almost wishes he hadn't taken his afternoon caffeine already; Bernard was sending off some _very_ weird vibes and it would have been nice to be able to read them.

"Are you okay?" Roxanne asks as they walk back to the street. "You look…upset."

"Not upset. Confused." Megamind shakes his head. "Did he seem _off_ , to you?"

Roxanne shrugs. "He seemed like he was pissed at you, if that's what you mean."

There's more to it than that, there has to be. Bernard was on edge—and he definitely implied there was a deadline of some kind. February, something about February. The way he was acting, it seemed like that was too late for something. But for what?

It isn't any of Megamind's business. Something private, no doubt. So he says, "You're probably right. I'm…probably just looking for fire where there isn't any smoke." He'll look into it further when he gets back to the Lair—for now, he puts the problem firmly out of his mind. He's taking a day off. He's not going to think about it right now.

Roxanne's voice startles him out of his reverie. "Do you want to head back now, or wait until after dark?"

Megamind looks over at her. Roxanne is actually slightly taller than he is, or she would be if his head weren't so disproportionately large. "Why?" he asks, and focuses determinedly on this new vein of conversation. "Does something particularly special happen after dark?"

Roxanne shrugs. "Well, there's the trick-or-treating," she says. "I wouldn't mind seeing which costumes are popular this year. If we were further south it wouldn't be half as interesting, but north of town like this, the outfits are mostly handmade."

"What's the difference?"

"Creativity, I guess." Megamind has his hands shoved in his pockets, or Roxanne would take his hand again. "Store-bought costumes are nice, but you get a lot of repetition. I don't know, I just like seeing what kids come up with." She grins. "I had longer hair when I was little, and one year I decided I wanted to be a bat. Mom spent two hours with me in the bathroom, taping my hair into two cones on either side of my head for ears. We tore up about fifteen pairs of black nylons to do it, and they didn't look anything like ears, but nobody else had the same costume."

Megamind tries to picture child-Roxanne in a bat costume and fails. "That sounds. Um. Fun?"

"It was. It was _loads_ of fun. Halloween's still one of my favorite holidays."

Megamind is never sure what he's supposed to say when Roxanne tells him a story about when she was little or about her family. If he were a normal, human boyfriend, he would respond with a similar story, right? That…that sounds right. "I went trick-or-treating, once," he offers, "with one of the other kids. It was Henny's idea. She took us around the office upstairs. Aian went as Godzilla and I dressed up as a Zeta Reticulan—we used up a lot of gray face paint and even then I was still sort of bluish." He smiles a little. "But it was fun, you know, to get candy for a change instead of cigarettes."

Roxanne starts to say something, then stops, looking uncertain.

"What?"

She hesitates. "Why did you get candy instead of cigarettes?"

Megamind blinks, then laughs. He really hadn't offered any backstory or explanation for that particular anecdote, had he? "Oh, well, going around the prison, you know how it is…grown men don't eat a lot of candy. Well, except for TB, but Uncle Mitch kept me away from him until I was a lot older."

Roxanne, who can read between lines, mentally awards Uncle Mitch another few points and risks another question. "So this year was special because you got candy. And you went around an office?"

 _Oh._ Megamind sees what the problem is. Timeline. "This was in Washington," he explains, and then, when Roxanne blinks and blushes and blurts something incoherent, has to try to keep from laughing. "Oh, for crying out loud." He rolls his eyes heavenward. "I look forward to the day when you and I no longer dance circles around each other. This is ridiculous. Look, I may be insecure and I may be slightly cracked, but if I volunteer a story, it's safe to assume that talking about it isn't going to trigger some sort of breakdown."

Roxanne laughs at that, but it's a little shaky. "We're quite a pair, aren't we? You're still worried you'll frighten me off, and I'm afraid of asking the wrong questions."

"At least we're making headway," Megamind points out cheerfully, linking his arm through hers. "Please don't worry about it? I told you before, I'm mostly fine, now. If you say something that makes me go a little funny, well, so much the better for me because then I know what to work on. Right?"

"I suppose so," Roxanne says, but she sounds dubious, and Megamind rolls his eyes again.

"Look," he says, sounding more confident than he feels. "If we bungle something, oh well, we'll work it out." His sudden grin is sharp and reassuring. "We seem to be good at that."

They've reached their quota on heavy discussions for the day already. He squeezes Roxanne's arm, hoping she'll drop it and just let this be a normal conversation.

"Okay," Roxanne says. "So who was Aian?"

 _God, I love this woman_. Megamind relaxes. "Aian was cool," he says. "I was never sure if she was a mutant or an alien, but I think she was somewhere around my age. She was quiet. We didn't talk much," he smiles at some hidden joke or memory, "but we clicked pretty well and we ate together when we were allowed to. We covered for each other a few times. She was transferred to another facility a few months before I was allowed to leave; I never did find out what happened to her."

"Really?" Roxanne frowns. "I would have thought you'd track her down as soon as you could."

"I'm curious, of course," Megamind admits, "but she told me she was going to be moved, and as good as told me not to look for her. I'd learned not to argue with her by that point. Aian…knows things."

"Like ESP?"

"Like the gift of tongues." Megamind shakes his head. "I'm a polyglot, but I had to learn those languages. Aian didn't learn languages, she just knew them. She understood every word that was spoken—sometimes she understood more than what was said. And she could tell when people were lying or had hidden motives. I learned a lot from her. Mostly how to lie convincingly."

Roxanne laughs. "Honey, you can't lie worth beans."

"Not to you," he says, and then, because that isn't entirely true, adds, "Not about important things, anyway. Not that I would." And that still isn't really the truth either. "Except, maybe, as an experiment? Maybe? Shutting up now." He's blushing again, he can feel it.

"Keep digging, I can still see you," Roxanne says with a grin. "But you know, you never did answer my question about the bomb you supposedly planted."

Megamind opens his mouth, then pauses. "Which one?"

" _Which one?_ " Roxanne stares at him. He's grinning. "Are you serious?"

Megamind's grin widens. "Maybe."

Roxanne scowls. "You're so obnoxious," she grouses.

"My dear Miss Ritchi, I built my career on being obnoxious. Don't think I'm going to stop now," Megamind says, and musters up his very best evil laugh. Along the street, heads turn as people look around. Roxanne has to lean on Megamind to keep from falling over laughing; his over-the-top expression would have looked perfectly natural on his face, but he isn't wearing his face. On Pavel, the expression makes him look like he's going to be suddenly and violently ill.

It's nothing like a normal relationship, and it's everything like a normal relationship. And it's anything but boring.

"We ought to play some sort of game," Megamind says after a while, eyeing a walking pile of balloons with deep suspicion. The pile is carrying a jack-o-lantern bucket half full of candy. "'Guess That Costume.' What _was_ that?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Multicolored bunch of grapes?" Roxanne nods at what looks like a pencil made of posterboard. "We could make Halloween Bingo, or something. Oh, now that's fun."

Megamind looks where she's pointing and snorts. "Not a lot of effort in that outfit. Suit, tie, big sign pinned to chest with 'IRS AUDIT TEAM' on it? Easy peasy." He sniffs haughtily. "I am unimpressed."

"Yeah, well, you have to admit it's scary," Roxanne points out. "That's one person you don't ever want ringing your doorbell. Besides," she adds slyly, "we can't _all_ have aquatic tailors to design us brilliantly complex costumes." When that comment fails to produce a response, Roxanne turns to look at her boyfriend. He's staring openmouthed down the street. Roxanne follows the direction of his gaze and blinks.

Two boys, too old for trick-or-treating, are circling each other slowly on the corner. They're probably in high school and Roxanne thinks at first that they might be on the football team; they're both fairly broad-shouldered and seem reasonably well-muscled—that much is obvious from their tight costumes, both of which are instantly recognizable as Metro Man and Titan. They've even managed to make their hair cooperate.

Titan lunges, keeping his weight low, his movements deliberate and crushing. Wrestling team, maybe. Metro Man has definitely had some training in a martial art. Whatever their backgrounds are, they both know enough to put on a pretty good show, despite the fact that the battle is probably rehearsed and the fighting styles don't match.

Roxanne watches for a minute or so before she realizes Megamind has moved away from her and is standing with his arms folded over his chest on the opposite side of the street, slouching in all his blue-skinned, leather-clad glory and wearing an enormous smile. Roxanne blinks once, startled at the sight of his leathers—but ah, yes, he's wearing the disguise generator. It's dark out and nobody but Roxanne has noticed him yet; everyone else's attention is fixed on the battling superheroes at the end of the block. She shakes her head and turns back to the fight.

The fighters are evenly matched, and when Titan finally goes down—thanks to a beautifully-executed but totally impractical combination double-punch and helicopter kick from Metro Man—both boys are breathing hard. They hold their poses for a moment, and then Metro Man bends down and hauls Titan to his feet to spatters of applause.

Megamind claps just a touch slower than everybody else, and for just a touch longer. Titan sees him first and elbows his companion, his eyes huge.

"That was _fantastic!_ " Megamind exclaims, taking his cue. "Good show, boys, good _show_. Wow. Two thumbs up. Two _really big_ thumbs up." He walks towards them, his movements quick and sharp and almost skipping, a sure sign that he's genuinely excited. If he's aware that people are pointing and staring, he doesn't show it. "That's probably the coolest thing I've ever seen, ever. Internet videos notwithstanding, that was the coolest thing I've _actually seen_." They're both taller than he is, but Megamind's presence is by far the more commanding. Megamind looks at Titan and blinks once. "You, I remember you. You were in the paper two months ago. Joey Metcalf. How did the tournament go? Did you place?"

Joey stares, then recovers himself with an effort. "I…what? Yes, I mean, yes. Fourth."

Megamind raises an eyebrow. "Out of?"

"Fifty."

Up goes the other eyebrow, and Megamind makes an impressed humming noise. "Not bad."

Joey shrugs. "Not my best," he mumbles, and Megamind sends him a conspiratorial smile.

"It's _never_ our 'best,'" he says in an undertone. Then he turns to Metro Man, frowning a little. "I don't think I recognize you. Are you from around here?"

"I'm…no. Visiting." The boy shakes his head, staring. Then he blinks a few times as if to try to clear his head. "I'm his cousin. Nick. Is my name."

Megamind sticks out his hand, and, looking shell-shocked, Nick shakes it. "Megamind," says Megamind, as if he could possibly be anybody else. "That spinning kick at the end, there. How did you do that?"

Nick stammers a little bit. Megamind has taken both boys by surprise with his sudden appearance but he's acting normally enough, and Nick finally seems to come to the conclusion that as long as the blue man is behaving like this is all business as usual, so will he. "It—was just a regular helicopter kick."

Megamind nods. "Yes, I saw that. But how did you _do_ it?"

At Megamind's insistence, Nick performs another kick, then another. Megamind taps his thumb against his lips, then drags it down over his goatee a couple of times, frowning. "I don't think I'd be able to do that." Nick blinks at him. "Counterweight," he explains. "My balance would be off."

Nick raises and lowers one shoulder. "Give it a try?" His face and his posture are all screaming _this-is-weird-this-is-weird-this-is-weird_ , but his voice sounds studiously calm.

Megamind pulls a face. "No point," he says. "I'm not built for it."

"Oh c'mon," Joey says suddenly, surprising the other two. "I've seen you on TV. You're all over the place."

Megamind blinks at him, his expression dubious. He takes a few steps back, then step-step-jumps—

And catches himself heavily on his hands and toes on the pavement. He picks himself up, dusting his palms together with a rueful shrug. "You see?" he says. "Case in point. It just won't happen."

"Your head's too big," Nick replies. Megamind snorts.

"Is it? I hadn't noticed."

Nick turns red. "No, I meant—I just meant—"

Megamind waves his apologies away. "I know what you meant. You're right. That's what I meant when I said my balance would be off." He half-smiles. "I'm springy, but there are things I'm just not physically capable of. Fully aerial maneuvers tend not to work very well for me."

"Well, and you're not warmed up," Nick reminds him over a squeal of tires from the road behind them. He's trying to offer Megamind an out, some way to brush off the embarrassment of having just failed in front of a group of people.

And villain-Megamind would have been embarrassed. It would have killed his image. But recently he's been trying to be more relatable to humans, more relaxed around them, so he says, in a conversational sort of voice, "I am warmed up, actually. Side effect of the whole 'alien physiology' thing. Always ready to jump at a moment's notice. But, anyway, thank you! And good luck with the wrestling, Joey," he adds, shaking their hands again. He waves over his shoulder as he moves away.

He ducks between two houses and resets his disguise, cuts across a few backyards, and pops out from behind an arborvitae in time to make Roxanne jump. "So, that was exciting," he says brightly. "Social interaction! Success! Yay me!"

Roxanne shakes her head, laughing. "Well done, you. What was that all about?"

"Their performance was good. As a fellow performer," he says, speaking as if this is the most natural thing in the world, "I wanted to say hello." Then he glances at his watch. "It's getting late. We should start heading back."

Roxanne nods. "Trick-or-treating's over soon anyway."

The small crowd that had gathered has now dissipated, and the October night has gone from chilly to cold. The brightest stars pick themselves out of the sky, but most are obscured by the lights from the city.

"Maxence?"

Megamind isn't really sure why the woman's voice catches his attention like it does, but Roxanne's head turns as well. A slip of a woman in a long coat and gloves is standing on her front porch—probably just returned from taking her children door-to-door—and staring up and down the street, peering around the tiny yard. A small girl with her thumb in her mouth grabs onto her mother's leg with her free hand. Megamind takes Roxanne's hand and they turn to leave, and then the woman calls out again, and this time her voice has the frantic undertone of rising panic.

"Max! _Maxence!_ "

Megamind turns without thinking, dances up the porch stairs. "Is everything okay? How can we help?"

The woman gapes at him—she's not American; it's written in her face, her stance, and for a moment Megamind wonders if maybe he should have spoken more slowly. Then she recovers. "No, is, my son—Maxence, he is here and now he is not here, I cannot see him—" She cranes her head a little to the side, bending to look over Megamind's shoulder, around his head, and stares up and down the street again.

"He's missing?" Megamind asks, then decides to take a gamble on the woman's accent and the boy's name. " _Est-il disparu?_ "

She looks at him unhappily. " _Je ne sais pas. Peut-être, je pense que oui—il était juste ici_." She's quickly becoming frantic; she presses her lips together and blinks hard, then calls out again, "Maxence!"

Roxanne comes up the stairs as Megamind puts a reassuring hand on the woman's shoulder. He glances back at Roxanne. "Her son's disappeared. Apparently he was here a minute ago. We're going to help her look."

Roxanne takes a breath. "Oh, no. What can I do?"

"You," Megamind begins, then stops, remembering the screech of tires when he'd been talking to Nick and Joey. He's off the porch like lightning, vaulting over the railing and sprinting away up the street. It hasn't been more than a minute, maybe two—they can't have gone far. He sees the two broad shapes ahead and slows. "Nick!" he shouts. "Joey! Hey, hold up!"

Confused, the two teens stop and turn around. Megamind skids to a stop. "Sorry, quick question," he says, panting a little. "When we were talking earlier, did either of you see anything? There was a car that sounded like it was spinning out, did you notice anything?"

Both boys stare at him blankly. "We?" Nick finally asks.

Megamind blinks at him, then curses inwardly—he's wearing Pavel again. He waves his hands. "No, sorry, forget that—" He grimaces. "Look, just, did either of you see anything? A car, a guy running, anything? A kid is missing," he says finally, and Joey's eyebrows go up.

"Yeah," he says excitedly, "yeah, there was a car. I remember I sorta wondered what he was doing, pulling away like that. It pulled over for, I dunno, a couple seconds, maybe? Over there." He points towards where Roxanne is still standing with the French woman, five or six doors down the block. "And then it drove away. Guy was _hauling_."

"Did you see anyone get out of the car?"

Joey shakes his head. "Nah, it was too dark. And I wasn't really paying attention. Just thought it was weird that he was driving so crazy, that's all."

Megamind nods, swallows, twirls his wrist in front of his chest a couple of times and tilts forward at the waist in an approximation of a breathless bow. "Thanks," he gasps, then whirls on his heel and dashes away again, narrowly avoiding running over a small boy and his father. He only misses them by leaping wildly to one side, arms akimbo.

Nick stares after him in total bewilderment. "The heck was that?"

Joey is starting to grin. "That," he says, "was Megamind."

Nick laughs shortly. "Yeah, right," he says, but he sounds more certain than he looks. "Get out."

"No, I'm serious," Joey says again, really grinning now. "You remember this summer? When he came to take down Titan, and he bluffed everybody into thinking he was really Metro Man and his fish was really him?" He looks back after the black-haired figure, which is little more than a dim silhouette at this point but still unmistakably in the process of leaping up the porch stairs. "You never know when he's gonna turn up; he can look like frickin _anybody_ ," he says, and grins so hard it's a wonder his smile doesn't jump off his face, then lets out a whoop and punches the air. "I _love_ living here!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can't become a billionaire without cheating someone, somewhere along the way. But! Turns out you CAN be a billionaire without exploiting workers, you just have to get really lucky treasure hunting in the Pacific. Also Megamind is independently wealthy and living off an endowment he set up for himself because COME ON, is that not the dream?
> 
> Also because seriously, villainy ain't cheap. I did some googling (it's what I do, you may have noticed), and [this website](https://www.buddyloans.com/blog/the-cost-of-a-super-villain-lair/) puts the startup cost of supervillainy, minus a doomsday device, at around US$636 million. But that's assuming you're building your lair from the ground up on a private island surrounded by piranhas (never mind that piranhas are _freshwater fish _that would _die horribly_ if you dropped them into the ocean around your island evil lair), and that your evil lair is modeled after the MI6 headquarters. Which Megamind's is not. But Megamind's lair runs on nuclear power, and the cost to build a nuclear power plant can easily be in the billions, so...who knows?__
> 
> So I figured, what the hell, I'll just give our boy an unreasonably huge fuckton of money and we'll call it good. A half-billion dollar endowment with a return of 5% would give Megamind about $25 million per year in passive income. That seems like it would more than cover a year's worth of villainy, no? I like to imagine Megamind buys medical debt somehow and pays it off with the extra, since the USA is so deeply shitty when it comes to healthcare. Maybe that will go in a future fic.
> 
> ANYWAY MONEY IS HARD AND I DON'T LIKE IT :(


End file.
